[I originally wrote this as a comment to the Google-China post below, but decided to add to it and make it a post unto itself.]
I just saw an interesting story in Forbes on Google’s dealings with another shifty government, the US, which is subpoening its search records as part of its War on Pornography (which I suspect will be about as successful as the War on Terror and the War on Drugs). In this case, Google doesn’t want to “dance with the devil” because, the Forbes piece claims, coughing up its porn-search data will be bad for business:
A public disclosure of exactly how much pornography is on the Internet and how often people look for it–the two data points that will result from fulfilling the government’s subpoena–could serve to make the Internet look bad. And Google, as its leading search engine, could look the worst.
None of the search engines make a full disclosure of how much porn users are looking at. When America Online lists its most popular searches, for instance, porn references are scrubbed out. But Nielsen/NetRatings says that porn sites attracted 38 million unique viewers in December–or a quarter of all Internet surfers.
Google and its competitors all benefit from porn sites, which help generate search queries and page views. But Google is the only portal company that makes nearly all of its revenue from click-through advertising. Restricting porn and porn advertising–the likely aim of COPA’s sponsors–could hurt Google disproportionately.
And filtering in general would also hurt Google more than its competitors. The Google brand is built on the notion that the engine gives users the clearest picture of the Web, without playing favorites. Restricting content in any way could hurt Google’s carefully burnished image, its 60% market share for search queries and its share price.
And there we have it. If China were pressuring Google to take steps that would damage its bottom line, they’d be howling in protest, filing suit, speaking in tongues and rending their garments in the public square. If, however, the dancing means more money, well then they’re just fine with it. And that’s the world in a nutshell.
Update: Via a reader, I see there’s a fine article in the Guardian about this:
Google’s announcement this morning that it has launched a Chinese
version (Google.cn) of its hugely successful search engine may seem like no more than a footnote in the fast-moving history of the internet. Google has ruminated long and hard over a decision it knows will be controversial. The company – motto “Don’t be evil” – aims for high ethical standards but has had to decide between its ambitions to be a big player in the second-biggest internet market and the inescapable need to accept Chinese censorship as a result….Whether Google might have done better in the long run commercially by
keeping to the high moral ground at a time of rapid change in China will now not be known. It has an approach that is more ethical than most, but the multitude of enthusiasts will find it hard to reconcile its mission to provide all information to everyone when there are exceptions for words such as “democracy”. It is easy to see why Google is doing this. This does not alter the fact that, sadly and in a significant way, it is not the same company today that it was yesterday.
Check it out.
1
By David
Hmm … not sure I agree with you. Any filtering that China forces Google to do would affect its revenue – it’s just that China can threaten Google with completly blocking access to google, so Google are backing down.
In the US when the government tries to interfere, then Google can say “We’re not cooperating until you force us via a court of law” (which is what they’re doing) – and know that a functional legal system and a respect for the constitution will be on their side. In China, if they try that then the Chinese government will just shut them down completely, and ignore their howls of protest. *That’s* the difference between the two cases.
January 25, 2006 @ 3:06 am | Comment
2
By Will
I’d expect Google to follow the available legal recourse to protect its business in any market it operates in.
In the US: going to court to protect the secrecy of information that may damage its brand substantially.
In China: zilch. Siddown and do as it’s told.
Pragmatism at work.
January 25, 2006 @ 4:57 am | Comment
3
By dishuiguanyin
Will, I evoked your name just now on the original thread on this topic. You’re the one who’s keen on considering the shades of grey in this situation. I’ve been arguing that google aren’t being totally evil here, and that they’ve at least thought about what they’re doing in China more than other firms. But I seem to be in the minority here. Any professional opinions other than the fact that it’s all about profits (which explains an awful lot of stuff in our world)?
January 25, 2006 @ 6:10 am | Comment
4
By richard
Dish, I don’t think Google is being evil. I think they’re doing what most companies would do in their situation, and it can be argued that what they are doing will benefit China.
January 25, 2006 @ 6:30 am | Comment
5
By richard
Be sure to see the update I just added.
January 25, 2006 @ 6:41 am | Comment
6
By dishuiguanyin
The one about the guardian? I’ll have a look now.
January 25, 2006 @ 7:25 am | Comment
7
By boo
So when Microsoft does it, we scream bloody murder, but when Google does it, it’ll benefit China?
January 25, 2006 @ 7:26 am | Comment
8
By dishuiguanyin
No, we have to consider each case on its own merits, find out as much as we can about each separate situation and then form an opinion. We shouldn’t jump in and make snap “black” or “white” judgements.
January 25, 2006 @ 7:35 am | Comment
9
By dishuiguanyin
“More ethical than most.” I agree with the Guardian. A lighter shade of grey.
January 25, 2006 @ 7:44 am | Comment
10
By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
So when Microsoft does it, we scream bloody murder, but when Google does it, it’ll benefit China?
Ummm… Microsoft already acquiesced to the US government without a court order. Same with Yahoo!
January 25, 2006 @ 8:00 am | Comment
11
By Ed
It’s certainly all driven by profit and pragmatism. But from a freedom of information standpoint, censoring information for the Chinese government is far worse than giving anonymous search request information.
Not being in China I haven’t seen Google’s implementation of their .cn offering. But I would infer that the omitted search results would not be very prominent for “usability” reasons. In other words, the Chinese that search on google won’t get much visibility to exactly what is being filtered, which is exactly what the CPP wants.
January 25, 2006 @ 9:47 am | Comment
12
By Letters from China
“Do No Evil” With Chinese Characteristics
(UPDATE 1) Google is learning to tangle with Chinese nanny by introducing a censored version of web search tailor-made for the mainland Chinese users. ESWN has highlighted the absurdity and ignorance of those who claim that the Chinese netizens should
January 25, 2006 @ 10:48 am | Comment
13
By Gordon
As I said the other day, The US government may be able to make life a little difficult for the search engine giant, but it’s not like they have the power to Google’s access off to the US market the way the Chinese government can in their country.
Also, I don’t hear any Chinese complaining about Google’s kowtowing to the Chinese government, so why should anyone else? If the Chinese oppose it, then I guess they’ll find a way to express their dissatisfaction the same way they did when the government blocked access to Google a while back.
January 25, 2006 @ 11:12 am | Comment
14
By Raj
Has anyone tried google.cn? I had a go and it’s absolutely terrible. Pro-CCP pages go right to the top, even if they are completely unrelated to political stuff. Do a search for random stuff, and you’ll see vaguely related sites from China right at the top pushing the Party line.
This is no better than what MSN and Yahoo are doing. Didn’t google say that “forbidden” results would appear but be listed as forbidden? Then why is it that they don’t appear at all – was that some dodgy PR nonsense that the staff thought no one would check on?
Google have completely sold out on their original mission statement. Next thing you hear, they’ll be buying up Nike’s sweatshops in India and selling arms to North Korea…….. :p
January 25, 2006 @ 12:25 pm | Comment
15
By Hui Mao
I think the Forbes’ article is arguing on a false premise. It’s true that Google makes money from porn advertisement. But the US government is not asking Google to remove ads or search results for porn sites; the government is asking Google to turn over records of search queries. Turning over search queries in no way harms Google’s ad revenue. Google stock fell 8% in a single day because of this refusal to hand over information, which translates to over $10 billion dollar loss. If it’s all about money, they should have just quietly submitted to the government like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL.
January 25, 2006 @ 3:35 pm | Comment
16
By China_hand
Has anyone tried google.cn? I had a go and it’s absolutely terrible. Pro-CCP pages go right to the top, even if they are completely unrelated to political stuff. Do a search for random stuff, and you’ll see vaguely related sites from China right at the top pushing the Party line.
Are you saying that those pro-CCP pages are tempered with to go higher? I think this is just because most pro-CCP pages (CCTV, Xinhua, People’s Daily, .gov.cn pages) generally receive more traffic and are linked more frequently than anti-CCP pages and therefore have higher page ranks. So the fact that they ranked higher is just a natural reflection of Google’s internal algorithm, and not as a result of human tempering.
Despite how ridiculed some Chinese media/sites are, they are still considered more “established”. I’m pretty sure CCTV.com and Peopledaily.com and the Chinese foreign ministry’s home page still have more hits than Free-Tibet and Falundafa and are linked more by other sites. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they show up higher. After all, Chinese Internet users contribute a lot to the traffic.
January 25, 2006 @ 4:01 pm | Comment
17
By Ed
“Also, I don’t hear any Chinese complaining about Google’s kowtowing to the Chinese government, so why should anyone else? ”
The Chinese don’t seem to be complaining about Falun Gong persecution, or freedom of religion, either. In fact, the only mass complaints since 89 have been about Japan’s war time atrocities. So outside that, anything goes, eh?
January 25, 2006 @ 4:01 pm | Comment
18
By xing
I think Gordon is exatcly right. The Chinese are the end users; and if most of them have no complain, why are your guys so angry about it. It created a media sensation last time when Yahoo china handled over emails of a disident, and do your guys know? FBI has access to any of Yahoo’s data at any time.
January 25, 2006 @ 5:00 pm | Comment
19
By richard
Also, I don’t hear any Chinese complaining about Google’s kowtowing to
the Chinese government, so why should anyone else? If the Chinese oppose it, then I guess they’ll find a way to express their dissatisfaction the same way they did when the government blocked access to Google a while back.
Why on earth would the Chinese oppose this? It’s good for them and offers them more options. Same witrh the Cisco technology; the benefits outweigh the evils in the mind of just about all Chinese Netizens. My question is whether American companies should comply in insitutionalizing censorship and thechnology actively used to catch “dissidents” and imprison them? (In Cisco’s case.)
January 25, 2006 @ 5:10 pm | Comment
20
By sam
Good point that Google’s “mission” is now effectively reconsidered.
I just had a phone interview with the BBC about this issue — on China bloggers’ reactions — and my comment was essentially that the objections are more symbolic than practical. News will be censored here no matter who supplies the software, but it can only help in the long run that there is international attention to the controversy.
January 25, 2006 @ 5:17 pm | Comment
21
By richard
So when Microsoft does it, we scream bloody murder, but when Google does it, it’ll benefit China?
Has Google shut down anyone’s blog?
January 25, 2006 @ 5:23 pm | Comment
22
By richard
I think Gordon is exatcly right. The Chinese are the end users; and if
most of them have no complain, why are your guys so angry about it.
Did you read my earlier post about Google? Where I said this was not only about China, but about America?
January 25, 2006 @ 5:45 pm | Comment
23
By xing
Richard, I did not.
January 25, 2006 @ 5:53 pm | Comment
24
By richard
Okay, see my earlier post, and my latest, just posted.
January 25, 2006 @ 6:12 pm | Comment
25
By Imagethief
In praise of Google in China
BBC’s website is blocked but many international apartment buildings get
BBC World. My colleague was…
January 25, 2006 @ 9:06 pm | Comment
26
By CLC
I think ‘limited information’ is still better than ‘no information’. For example, if I do a search and find a piece of filtered news from Xinhua “A riot was put down, nobody was killed”. Then I will ask, ‘is it true’? Then I will try to get news outside China. However, if I don’t have this limited info to begin with, I will probably never know the truth.
January 25, 2006 @ 11:08 pm | Comment
27
By Raj
Richard:
Google has sold out on its core principles – I can still remember the “mission statement” about how it wasn’t going to be like Microsoft. So the fact that they’ve been broken makes it even worse.
Google has shown us where it stands – it’s out for money, end of story. If that’s its choice then fine – but it can’t have its cake and eat it. If you make your bed you have to sleep in it.
Unfortunately for google, a lot of its users will now start to get disillusioned with it. We’ll still use it, but only because it’s better than the rest – not because we have any more loyalty to it. As soon as something better comes along lots of people will switch. Google had better realise this. We would have stuck with google through thick and thin before – now we’ll be as “loyal” as their Chinese customers.
January 26, 2006 @ 3:52 am | Comment
28
By FChia
Raj, China_hand,
Yes, I’ve tried Google.cn (which I described in another post in this site). Search “falungong”, Google.cn came back with 3,999 while Google.com came back with 148,000. The first 2 pages of Google.cn search are all articles about how evil falungong is, while the first pages of Google.com are mixed articles and news – indifferent, bad, good… So Raj, you are right. Google.cn will in effect give you only officially sanctioned sites.
Xing, Gordon,
With this kind of result, Chinese users certainly will not complain. How can they complain about things they don’t know about? You’re too condescending on the Chinese people. They are just as smart and as dumb as the rest of us, they don’t just get the facts that are due them. Don’t we have a moral obligation as fellow human beings?
January 26, 2006 @ 4:26 am | Comment
29
By dishuiguanyin
FChia: are you inside the firewall or not? I’ve tried it from within the firewall and here are my results (sorry, I’m cross-posting this to both google discussions):
My results of a comparison between google.com/intl/zh-CH and google.cn:
1. Neutral search for ‹ã?] (city where I used to live):
google.com produces 2,700,000 results in 0.36 seconds.
google.cn produces 2,490,000 results in 0.13 seconds.
The first ten results were exactly the same on both pages. I didn’t check later pages.
2. Slightly contentious search … not sure whether I should type it in Chinese or not …. just to be safe, I’ll tell you it was the “d3m0cracy” word:
google.com produces 14,600,000 results in 0.15 seconds
google.cn produces 14,500,000 results in 0.15 seconds plus the notice to tell me that “due to local laws some results are not shown”
First ten results were exactly the same on both pages. I didn’t check later pages.
3. Extremely dangerous search, I’ll just give you the letters F…L…G…:
google.com “cannot connect to server” despite frequent hitting of refresh button and trying several times in new browser windows – Celestial Nanny strikes again.
google.cn 886,000 results in 0.29 seconds plus the notice that “some results are not shown due to….”
Couldn’t compare the two since google.com was impossible to see.
So, is it better to get no results at all because the nanny won’t even let you see the page to find out how much is blocked, or is it better to get censored results and a polite notice telling you they’re censored?
I know which I prefer – google.co.uk (sorry, that’s a joke).
January 26, 2006 @ 5:21 am | Comment
30
By dishuiguanyin
Richard: you were right, I can now get google.com IN ENGLISH as well as in Chinese. That’s an improvement for me since yesterday.
January 26, 2006 @ 5:23 am | Comment
31
By asiapundit
google: not evil, but maybe not so smart
In most criticisms of Google’s decision to censor its newly launched China portal, it’s assumed that the company is sacrificing its ethics for the huge China market. That’s not quite true, it is sacrificing them for the potential of
January 26, 2006 @ 6:22 am | Comment
32
By richard
Google has sold out on its core principles
I agree completely. I said they can no longer take the moral high ground. They’re just like any other money-hungry corporation. Is that bad? I’m reserving judgment.
January 26, 2006 @ 6:49 am | Comment
33
By richard
To be prescise, here’s what I wrote in my later post, above:
January 26, 2006 @ 6:51 am | Comment
34
By Raj
richard
Well as I said, they’ve sacrificed a lot of customer goodwill for money. We’re less likely to stick around now.
So they’re sacrificing long-term stability for short-term profit. That is at the very least stupid.
January 26, 2006 @ 7:28 am | Comment
35
By FChia
Dishuiquanyin,
I am outside China. And I type in my search in English.
These are my results:
“Democracy”
Google.cn: 79,500,000
Google.com: 141,000,000
First page mostly the same, but not wholly identical
“Tiananmen”
Google.cn: 30,900
Google.com: 1,790,000
First page mostly NOT the same, with a few identical. No item on the 1989 Tiananmen incident in Google.cn results on the first page.
Still there is a heck of a lot of difference in number of results.
If you are inside China, probably your Google.com is filtered. Then, you are getting censored information both ways.
January 26, 2006 @ 9:45 am | Comment
36
By FChia
Richard,
I work for a large company that also builds high-technology products in China, and sold worldwide, including China. We do not sacrifice the standard of our products sold in China.
Google’s product is to provide ease of access to information. They are short changing the Chinese consumers by giving them half a product.
Is that ethical from a supplier/customer relationship standpoint? Something to think about.
From a moral standpoint, there is also business ethics that almost all Western companies are supposed to uphold – this is to counterbalance greed as an extreme result of just focusing on profit-motive.
Although I realize it’s easier said than done.
January 26, 2006 @ 10:16 am | Comment